Sean Maher's Quality Control

Sunday, July 30, 2006

Mel Gibson is a GENIUS

TMZ has learned that Mel Gibson went on a rampage when he was arrested Friday on suspicion of drunk driving, hurling religious epithets. TMZ has also learned that the Los Angeles County Sheriff's department had the initial report doctored to keep the real story under wraps.

TMZ has four pages of the original report prepared by the arresting officer in the case, L.A. County Sheriff's Deputy James Mee. According to the report, Gibson became agitated after he was stopped on Pacific Coast Highway and told he was to be detained for drunk driving Friday morning in Malibu. The actor began swearing uncontrollably. Gibson repeatedly said, "My life is f****d." Law enforcement sources say the deputy, worried that Gibson might become violent, told the actor that he was supposed to cuff him but would not, as long as Gibson cooperated. As the two stood next to the hood of the patrol car, the deputy asked Gibson to get inside. Deputy Mee then walked over to the passenger door and opened it. The report says Gibson then said, "I'm not going to get in your car," and bolted to his car. The deputy quickly subdued Gibson, cuffed him and put him inside the patrol car.

TMZ has learned that Deputy Mee audiotaped the entire exchange between himself and Gibson, from the time of the traffic stop to the time Gibson was put in the patrol car, and that the tape fully corroborates the written report.

Once inside the car, a source directly connected with the case says Gibson began banging himself against the seat. The report says Gibson told the deputy, "You mother f****r. I'm going to f*** you." The report also says "Gibson almost continually [sic] threatened me saying he 'owns Malibu' and will spend all of his money to 'get even' with me."

The report says Gibson then launched into a barrage of anti-Semitic statements: "F*****g Jews... The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world." Gibson then asked the deputy, "Are you a Jew?"

The deputy became alarmed as Gibson's tirade escalated, and called ahead for a sergeant to meet them when they arrived at the station. When they arrived, a sergeant began videotaping Gibson, who noticed the camera and then said, "What the f*** do you think you're doing?"

A law enforcement source says Gibson then noticed another female sergeant and yelled, "What do you think you're looking at, sugar tits?"

We're told Gibson took two blood alcohol tests, which were videotaped, and continued saying how "f****d" he was and how he was going to "f***" Deputy Mee.

Gibson was put in a cell with handcuffs on. He said he needed to urinate, and after a few minutes tried manipulating his hands to unzip his pants. Sources say Deputy Mee thought Gibson was going to urinate on the floor of the booking cell and asked someone to take Gibson to the bathroom.

After leaving the bathroom, Gibson then demanded to make a phone call. He was taken to a pay phone and, when he didn't get a dial tone, we're told Gibson threw the receiver against the phone. Deputy Mee then warned Gibson that if he damaged the phone he could be charged with felony vandalism. We're told Gibson was then asked, and refused, to sign the necessary paperwork and was thrown in a detox cell.

Deputy Mee then wrote an eight-page report detailing Gibson's rampage and comments. Sources say the sergeant on duty felt it was too "inflammatory." A lieutenant and captain then got involved and calls were made to Sheriff's headquarters. Sources say Mee was told Gibson's comments would incite a lot of "Jewish hatred," that the situation in Israel was "way too inflammatory." It was mentioned several times that Gibson, who wrote, directed, and produced 2004's "The Passion of the Christ," had incited "anti-Jewish sentiment" and "For a drunk driving arrest, is this really worth all that?"

We're told Deputy Mee was then ordered to write another report, leaving out the incendiary comments and conduct. Sources say Deputy Mee was told the sanitized report would eventually end up in the media and that he could write a supplemental report that contained the redacted information -- a report that would be locked in the watch commander's safe.

Initially, a Sheriff's official told TMZ the arrest occurred "without incident." On Friday night, Sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore told TMZ: "The L.A. County Sheriff's Department investigation into the arrest of Mr. Gibson on suspicion of driving under the influence will be complete and will contain every factual piece of evidence. Nothing will be sanitized. There was absolutely no favoritism shown to this suspect or any other. When this file is presented to the Los Angeles County District Attorney, it will contain everything. Nothing will be left out."

On Saturday, Gibson released the following statement:

"After drinking alcohol on Thursday night, I did a number of things that were very wrong and for which I am ashamed. I drove a car when I should not have, and was stopped by the LA County Sheriffs. The arresting officer was just doing his job and I feel fortunate that I was apprehended before I caused injury to any other person. I acted like a person completely out of control when I was arrested, and said things that I do not believe to be true and which are despicable. I am deeply ashamed of everything I said. Also, I take this opportunity to apologize to the deputies involved for my belligerent behavior. They have always been there for me in my community and indeed probably saved me from myself. I disgraced myself and my family with my behavior and for that I am truly sorry. I have battled with the disease of alcoholism for all of my adult life and profoundly regret my horrific relapse. I apologize for any behavior unbecoming of me in my inebriated state and have already taken necessary steps to ensure my return to health."

It's a bit of a shame, too, because I really wanna be sure and pick up Toupydoops #3 when it comes out on Wednesday. I've been having a lot of fun with the book and I seem to remember Kevin McShane wanting to use a quote from my review of #1 in the third issue, or ads for the third issue, or something...

Add to that the release of Jeremiah Harm #4 and War of the Worlds: Second Wave #5, and we've got Boom! Studios front-loading this week's releases with their very best books.

Of course, there's also the new issue of Brubaker's Daredevil, but it's not like I've been enjoying the holy shit out of that, is it?

Monday, July 24, 2006

San Diego MADNESS!

The Image book that Joe Keatinge's taking over? Turns out it's Ant, funny enough. Erik Larsen tells us that "Joe is a bundle of energy and he has more ideas than ten writers. He's been chugging away on a top secret project for me, and I thought he'd be a perfect fit for Ant."

Curious not only about Joe's ideas for Ant, but also about his TOP SECRET PROJECT FOR ERIK LARSEN.

Neat.

*****

Image also announced some new books by Steve Niles and Nat Jones, The Tripper and Long Pig. I really enjoyed their work together on Giant Monster, so I'll be looking forward to the new stuff. I'm more excited by Long Pig, which "tells of a story set deep in the Appalachian mountains, of families who have lived, isolated from all of humanity, since the day their ship landed on the mainland," and The Tripper seems to have David Arquette and Ronald Reagan involved somehow, which leaves me less enticed, but two out of three ain't bad, eh?

*****

David Lapham on his upcoming OGN for Vertigo, Silverfish, due next June:

Silverfish is going to be a 154-page graphic novel, the same format as Dave Gibbons Eisner winning The Originals. It's an intense suspense/coming of age story about a sixteen-year-old girl from a sleepy Seaside town, who opens a Pandora's box when she digs into the secret past of her beautiful young stepmom. Ultimately she attracts the attention of a deranged killer who believes himself possessed by thousands of tiny "Silverfish" that live in his ear.

The main word here is suspense. I have a small cast of characters who spend a lot of time together trying to hide what they know and pretending to be what they're not. It's fast pace, grips you, and doesn't let up till the last page. (Well...maybe the third from last page.)

It's the first time I've done a long story like this and not had to worry about an issue by issue breakdown, so I can just run with the suspense and don't have to worry if a sequence falls in eight pages, two pages, or twenty pages. I'm trying to see what can be done in comics in terms of suspense and creating suspense even in the quiet moments when people are just sitting around talking. Comics have a different hold on you than in a film where you have no control. So the trick is to keep people turning those pages and becoming absorbed in the story.

Crossing Midnight is a Vertigo ongoing, obviously... with Jim Fern on pencils. The basic premise is you have two kids who live in present-day Nagasaki, Japan. They're twins, but one was born just before midnight and the other just after. That difference has a huge impact on their destinies, with the after-midnight twin being inducted into a world of supernatural beings and events which intersects with our own world. The aim was to produce a book where both aspects of the term horror/fantasy would apply.

...The seed of it comes from the fact that I've got twin sons myself... and I've always been fascinated by the ways in which they're alike and the ways in which they're unique and different. It was a natural direction for my thoughts to be channeled in, I guess. Just as my daughter, Louise, is fictionalized as Elaine in Lucifer. So here it was my sons, Davey and Ben, who gave me the initial starting point for Kai and Toshi.

...The reason for the setting is because we're using the folk religion on Japan as the mythological framework for the series... Actually, mythological is probably the wrong word: I'm not talking about Shinto here, but about a cluster of ideas and beliefs which is just part of the cultural background in Japan. The main strand is the idea that everyday objects are inhabited by individual spirits; [called] kami. These spirits are among our main characters, and the idea of beings like tiny gods with links to specific objects is very much our starting point. Yes, Nagasaki's relevant background. Only indirectly relevant, but we refer to it in the first issue. The narrator, Kai, says that the bombing and its after-effects have created a unique mind-set or outlook in modern residents of the city, and he ties that in to some of the decisions that his parents made. After that, we don't insist on it much, but one of the gateways into the spirit world is an arch that was ruined in the bombing and has been preserved ever since as a monument, the Sanno Shinto shrine. In the spirit world the arch is still intact. There'll be occasional references like that. It matters that this is a place where something terrible happened but people survived it.

How awesome does this sound?!

*****

Marvel had some neat announcements - nothing mindblowing, but what the hell are people expecting? They're Marvel Comics. The big announcement at any given time is just gonna be a big-name creative team on one or more of their big-name characters, right?

And, frankly, I hope something comes of it. I'd like to see some new Todd McFarlane art and I don't think anybody's around who'd be better at writing for it.

*****

Also very excited about The Secret History from Archaia Studios Press. These guys are really landing on my radar lately - between this and Mouse Guard, I'm gonna have to start paying very close attention to their output.

Here's the skinny on The Secret History:

The Secret History (Feb 2007, bi-monthly, $5.95, 48 pages, Jean-Pierre Pécau (writer), Igor Kordey, Leo Pilipovic, Goran Sudzuka (illustrators)) is a story told in 7 chapters, each one more intriguing than the last. Four immortal brothers and sisters, four archons, are entrusted with ivory cards in the dawn of prehistory by a dying shaman. They are told never to use the cards together. These archons, four, leap through time, consumed in an epic struggle to influence and shape the history of Western civilization. From Moses’ challenge to the Pharaoh to the origin of the Grail myth; from the Pope’s extermination of the Cathars to Nostradamus’ travels in Italy; from the Spanish Armada and the Great Fire of London to Napoleon’s conquest of Egypt; and finally to the Angel of Mons appearing over the trenches of World War I: a secret occult history of the world told in seven chapters. Mature Readers for graphic violence and nudity.

Thursday, July 20, 2006

Heath Ledger cast as Joker?

Still a rumor, it looks like, but casting Heath Ledger as The Joker in Christopher Nolan's next Batman movie sounds like an inspired idea to me. Why? Because it's not obvious. You hear the guy's name and imagine what you've seen him in and how that could be Jokerized and it doesn't really fit exactly.

Which is exactly what these guys are gonna need. Joker's been done perfectly twice now. Jack Nicholson hit the vicious-mobster-gone-insane note brilliantly, all sing-songy and morbid and seething, and Mark Hamill took the cartoony, failed-standup-comedian, hysterical-laughing angle and ran with it with amazing creativity and commitment.

So, both of those approaches to the Joker are taken. Any attempt to use those takes on the character will immediately signal a weak impression of a previous performance.

Ledger (and Nolan) will have to do something new. And call me crazy, but I think Ledger's got the imagination and enthusiasm to do it. I wouldn't have said that before - had him more or less dismissed as a stock-character pretty boy somewhere inbetween Freddy Prinze, Jr. and Colin Farrell - but Brokeback Mountain, it turned out, was a really great flick, and rode almost entirely on the understated strength and innovation of his performance.

Wednesday, July 19, 2006

DMZ and the Future of Comics

Comics internet seems a little slow lately, don't it?

Funny, I can't really remember if there's supposed to be a lot of build-up leading into San Diego, or if they hold their cards super-close and expect the internet to go batshit after the Con. Clearly at the moment we're looking at the latter, but it's funny that so many boards and blogs are down-tuning at the same time.

Ah, well. No worries.

*****

Ooh, great scan, Zilla. DMZ is quietly becoming a favorite title of mine, and certainly my favorite stuff of Brian Wood's career. This moment was absolutely brilliant - quiet and underplayed while still tense and almost horrifying.

Also does a lot to establish how Matt's changed already. Great work.

*****

Marvel and DC solicits for October are online, and I'm really starting to get confused by David Lapham. I mean, I'm a fan of his in general, and Stray Bullets specifically is among my three or four favorite comics series ever. But his run on Detective Comics was godawful, somehow, and his Marvel work has really only been good. This month, though, we find him writing Giant-Size Wolverine #1 and kicking off an eight-issue mini with Azzarello, titled Tales of the Unexpected (with a Mignola cover!) and ostensibly exploring what happens to the Spectre in the wake of the currently-running Will Pfeifer mini.

What the hell happened to Stray Bullets? And what about that sci-fi book he was working on?

Part two (of four) in Kurt Busiek's Astro City: The Dark Age epic kicks off,

The return of Desolation Jonesand a new Planetary (nice month for Ellis fans),

The Other Side launches at last, and I'm psyched to see Cameron Stewart doing a Vietnam book,

The Amazing Spider-Girl gets a full relaunch, which somehow I see myself giving a shot,

BKV's Dr. Strange: The Oath mini launches (and may I say, I think Marcos Martin is a great choice for artist),

Kirkman's Irredeemable Ant-Man finally hits, and I'm really amazed by how hard this book is to pin down ahead of time - I've got no idea what to expect.

Aaaaand... Marvel's MAX line expands with Hellstorm: Son of Satan #1, written and pencilled by folks I don't know at all ("acclaimed novelist Alexander Irvine" and Russell Braun, who worked on Animal Man, which I never read), but this should be interesting.

Wow, that's a huge fucking month already.

*****

I saw Pirates of the Carribean: Dead Man's Chest yesterday, and fuck all y'all: that movie was awesome. I wanted to write a full review but I'm sick of sitting at the computer for now, but expect some thoughts maybe over the weekend; I'm seeing it a second time, with Molly, on Friday.

Just... wow.

*****

Oh, and one little thing I wanted to share. You know those spam e-mails that have been coming around lately with these weird series of words that make no sense? (What the hell is the deal with those?)

My favorite one came in a couple days ago, with the subject line, "graduate school irreparably".

I felt the tremors, but most of the city still seems to be standing. He has spared us again, in his mercy.

*****

Wanna tell Marvel what to do? Well, the trade department is asking what stories we'd all like to see in the "Premiere Hardcover" format. As a general rule, I think that format is bullshit, but they're talking about classic stuff, like the upcoming re-collection of Spider-Man: Kraven's Last Hunt, all chock-full of extras and stuff, which is a whole 'nother story.

First on the chopping block, judging by its inclusion in nearly everyone's list so far, should be the Miller/Mzzuchelli classic, Daredevil: Born Again. It'd make a nice companion book to the Batman: Year One hardcover, don't you think?

Wednesday, July 12, 2006

Back to Back

Molly just minutes ago got a job offer for thousands more than she was asking, thousands more than the outfit was even offering before they met her. FUCK YEAH. My girlfriend is unstoppable.

*****

We saw Superman Returns yesterday, at the IMAX Theater in the San Francisco Metreon. As a general rule, I won't go to the Metreon. It's too expensive, everywhere you turn is another goddamn over-priced knock-off store, the popcorn is stale, the automatic radar flushers in the Men's Room toilets don't work. But that fuckin' IMAX thing is, I gotta admit, pretty pimp. Never been in one before, and this was the first movie there ever in 3D projection, too. It's not the whole movie (thank God), but it sure added some goddamn pepper to the plane saving scene, let me tell you.

All told, I enjoyed the movie. It was too long and too dark, but I thought Routh was charming, Spacey did more with Luthor than I'd expected (his opening scene was especially fun), Frank Langella was a lot of fun as Perry White, and Sam Huntington gave us the best Jimmy Olsen I've ever seen, really made the role his own - he really balanced the need to appeal to the "classic" Jimmy Olsen stereotype with the need for a twist of his own on the character, and delivered 100%.

You know who was surprisingly good? James Marsden. I haven't liked him in the X-Men movies at all, but I thought he was really genuinely charming as Lois Lane's new squeeze, and his moments of heroism were nearly as powerful as Superman's, especially when the ship was sinking. The strength of his character and performance kept the love triangle from getting boring. Usually they cast The Other Man as being some schmuck who doesn't deserve the girl anyway and there's no tension as a result - we're just waiting for everyone to come to their senses and for the two main characters to get together and leave the guy in the dust. As the end approaches in this movie, though, we still don't know what Lois should do. Whether or not Kate Bosworth has the gravitas to hold up her end of this, I won't bother to say, but the balance of Superman against a "normal" super-man is one of the best, most resonant parts of the movie.

Yeah, it's flawed. It's a two-and-a-half-hour Superman movie in which Lois Lane has a little kid, for Christ's sake - who didn't see some flaws coming?

So the hell what? I had fun.

*****

Jason Rodriguez drew my attention to this Newsarama preview for Empty Chamber by "the Harvey Nominated team of The Lone and Level Sands, A. Dave Lewis and Jenn Rodgers."

EDIT: Jason Copland is the illustrator on the book, so the art here is his - cheers to J-Rod for the correction and to Copland himself for dropping by!

When Mouse Guard creator David Petersen dropped by to level some praise on the book, I got even more interested. 'Course, the work stands on its own, too:

Five more pages and a cover at the link.

*****

Then Rick Spears dropped me a line to point out this Wizard preview for Rotting in Dirtville, the new Gigantic Graphic Novels book by James Callahan. Looks pretty promising, and includes an interview:

*****

Finally, while looking around for a good cover image for this week's Wasteland #1, I found several previews (this was the best). The new ONI book from writer Antony Johnston and artist Christopher Mitten looks amazing. Johnston's already proven himself as a writer on books like The Long Haul and Queen & Country: Declassified, and Mitten's preview art looks really incredible.

The first issue is out today, a double-sized 48 pages for a mere three bucks. Count on this one being good.

*****

So, aside from Wasteland #1, what else is coming? Well, we've got one bit of amazing good news:

NEW SHAOLIN COWBOY! Ah, always reason for celebration.

"But the delays are so long, I can't remember what's going on in the story!"

Uh, so the fuck what? If there was ever a book where that didn't matter, it's Geof Darrow's insane magnum opus. Just put yourself in the moment and watch him fighting a giant great white shark with a mummy head and a sword in its mouth fighting Shaolin Cowboy with a staff that's got chainsaws on both ends. Do you really need context to have fun reading that? If so, look at the pages up on Newsarama and change your mind.

All right, so there's that, the penultimate chapter of Mark Millar's surprisingly-good Ultimate Fantastic Four run, the next issue of Brian Wood's ever-improving DMZ, the first issue of new-status-quo Fables, the climactic end of the first major arc of Strange Girl, a new Walking Dead, Logan versus Captain America in Wolverine: Origins, and the first issue of Mike Carey's run with Chris Bachalo on X-Men. The first issue of Brubaker's run on Uncanny was strong enough to keep me excited for this one, even though I thought I was all done with X-Men comics.

*****

Oh, and I stumbled on a neat series of columns called Sequential Smarts, by a dude named Eric Adams. This week's column is about branding, which is what caught my eye - hanging around James Sime and Larry Young as often as I do, branding is something I hear a lot about.

As much as I've already heard about it, though, there's always somebody looking to make a unique mark on things, and while naming his publishing company Gen:Eric Publishing and his book Lackluster World doesn't exactly fire me up with enthusiasm for his comics work (marketing step one, Larry's often told me, is a salable title), I gotta say Adams' writing is strong, especially in moments like this:

Wednesday, July 05, 2006

I want to LIIIIIIIIIIVE!!!

Forgive the lack of activity here this week; I'm looking for work.

What's that, you say? I thought you already had four jobs? What the hell is the matter with you?

Couldn't say, exactly.

*****

That said, Terry Wallis is my hero. You've heard about this, right? This guy got in a car accident in 1984 and went nearly braindead - into a "minimally concious state," lying there in a hospital bed making the odd grunt now and then.

News just hit that in 2003, homeboy woke the fuck up.

This guy's brain fucking fixed itself. It took almost twenty years to do it, and he's still nowhere near 100% - he thinks Reagan is president, he can't walk - but we're talking about someone who was this close to being a vegetable and dug himself out of it.

My dad took a serious moment with me last year. I guess he felt it falls to me as the eldest son to pull the plug in the event he falls into a coma or becomes a vegetable, and he asked me not to hesitate.

It's funny - people seem really sure of what they want in this regard. Most of the folks in my life are firmly in the Pull The Plug camp.

Me? I'm convinced miracles happen. Nobody ever knew Terry Wallis had a chance. Now he's having conversations and hanging out with his loved ones again.

I'm not without qualms - I certainly don't like the idea of being retarded, or sending my family into the poorhouse so my corpse can keep its heart beating - but when it comes right down to it, being alive right now in this world is all I'm sure I'm gonna get, and I have a really hard time turning my back on that.

Especially when there's a chance. And while it's a minimal one - doctors are comparing his experience to winning the lottery, and as far as I can tell from the reporting this hasn't happened before in recorded medical science - I'll take it.

*****

Lots of fun comics coming out this week, and I'm looking forward to the Isotope's Continuity Retrogressive Art Closing tomorrow night. Of particular interest may be the live art event Josh hints at in yesterday's AiT blog post, but I'll say no more.

Battler Briton #1comes out tomorrow, a new Garth Ennis war book, and those are almost always worth checking out (somehow I passed on the recent Nick Fury mini).

Good to see more of War of the Worlds: Second Wave coming, too. I still think this is Boom! Studios' best book, and I'm looking forward to the odd addition to the cast promised by the cover.

Umbra #2 continues the intriguing murder mystery and, according to artist Mike Hawthorne, ramps up the violence element, so that should be fun.

Dark Horse has a big week. Conan & The Songs Of The Dead #1 kickstarts a miniseries by Joe R. Lansdale and Tim Truman, which editor Scott Allie calls "the most savage version of Conan you're ever bound to see." I've been enjoying most of the Dark Horse Conan stuff and will likely check this out. Then they've got the 25-cent Dark Horse Twenty Years book, which is gonna have art from Eric Powell and Mike Mignola and, I think, Joss Whedon, everyone bouncing around the licensed Dark Horse properties and doing characters they've never done before. Should be fun. And of course, a new issue of The Goon is always worth celebrating.

Almost all of my regular Marvel books come out tomorrow, too. Punisher MAX, The Thing, The Incredible Hulk, all in the same week. I'm also excited to see the final issue of Last Planet Standing, as I've been having fun with that book, and I'll probably pick up Franklin Richards, Son Of A Genius: Super Summer Spectacular because I've been enjoying the idea that Calvin and Hobbes could have taken place in the world of the Fantastic Four. This one-shots once or twice a year are also pretty much exactly right in guessing how much demand there'd be for a book like this.

Monday, July 03, 2006

Ferreyran Gold

Juan Ferreyra's been a "rising star" artist in my eyes since the launch of Small Gods a couple years ago, and he's working with Rex Mundi collaborator Arvid Nelson on a ten-page story for the upcoming Dark Horse Book of Monsters. Actually, they're done with it. And the story is available in its gory entirety online, thank you very much.

You see what I'm saying? This guy is one to watch.

(Also, this series has been really cool, so I'll definintely be picking up the new one.)